Iwork '05: The Missing Manual : 9780596100377

Introduced by Apple in January 2005, iWork '05 is an innovative new suite of document and presentation software that's the same caliber as Apple's groundbreaking digital media applications and that's wholly dedicated to what Mac users like you care about most: artistry and creativity. iWork '05 isn't about "office productivity"--it's about creating slick and stylish documents and cinema-quality digital presentations that say precisely what you want them to say.

While iWork '05 helps you create stunning documents and presentations, the suite doesn't come with any in-depth documentation of its own. That's where iWork '05: The Missing Manual comes in. The book that should have been in the box, it gives you everything you need to master iWork '05.

Seamlessly integrated with the wildly popular iLife '05 and designed to take advantage of the advanced typography and graphics engine of Mac OS X, iWork is actually two separate programs: Pages and Keynote 2. Pages is a brand-new, streamlined word processor and page layout program that allows nonprofessionals to quickly and painlessly produce gorgeous brochures, newsletters, letters, invitations, product data sheets, and more. You can start documents from scratch or use one of the 40 professionally designed templates as a starting point. Keynote 2 is a significant upgrade to Keynote, Apple's PowerPoint-like presentation software that allows you to build unique presentations, demonstrations, storyboard animations, interactive slideshows, and more.

Like every Missing Manual, this one is refreshingly entertaining and scrupulously detailed. iWork '05: The Missing Manual gives you all the essentials of Pages and Keynote 2, including an objective look at each program's capabilities, its advantages over similar programs, and its limitations. The book delivers countless goodies that you won't find anywhere else: undocumented tips, tricks, and secrets for getting the very best results from both exciting new applications.

With the iWork '05 suite and iWork '05: The Missing Manual, you are totally equipped to give your work the style it deserves.

Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2005 (Programmer to Programmer) : 9780764571978

You'll learn the essentials of Visual C++ 2005 and get a thorough introduction to the techniques used for accessing data sources in both Microsoft® Foundation Classes and Windows® Forms applications. Plus, the exercises included at the end of most chapters will help you apply what you've learned as you make your way to becoming an effective C++ programmer.

What you will learn from this book

• How to use the capabilities of Visual C++ 2005 to create applications


• Unique aspects and new features of Visual C++ 2005


• The basic ideas and techniques involved in debugging


• Ways to build a graphical user interface for your application


• How Microsoft Windows applications are structured


• Tips for understanding the nuances of C++ without getting confused by the complexities of Windows GUI programming

Who this book is for

This book is for novice programmers who are looking to write C++ applications for the Microsoft Windows OS. No previous programming experience is required.

Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

About the Author
Ivor Horton is one of the preeiminent authors of tutorials on the Java, C and C++ programming languages. He is widely known for the tutorial style of his books, which provides step-by-step guidance easily understood even by first-time programmers. Horton is also a systems consultant in private practice.

Ivor Horton's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5 Edition : 9780764568749

Combining simplicity with power, Java has become the object-oriented language of choice for Internet programming and cross-platform applications. This comprehensive and easy-to-use guide provides you with the essential information you'll need to know in order to develop dynamic programs using the Java 2 Standard Edition 5.0 or later.

You'll be introduced to the fundamental ideas about the structure of Java programs and how they work. You'll gain a clear understanding of all the latest features of the Java language as well as the key packages in the Java class library. And with the help of numerous working examples, you'll find out how to apply the material so you can write your own full-featured applications and applets.

This book teaches you how to start programming in Java, covering everything from putting together statements and performing calculations to applying the capabilities provided by the Java class libraries, and much more.

What you will learn from this book

• The basics of how the Java language works


• Ways to apply key language elements


• Methods for storing data in a program


• How to define and utilize classes


• How to create applets for use in interactive Web pages


• Techniques for implementing an application with a graphical user interface


• How to use the JDBC capability to work with relational databases


• All the skills to become a knowledgeable Java programmer

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to explore how Java works and discover how to write fully featured and effective Java programs. No previous Java experience is necessary.

ITV Handbook: Technologies and Standards : 9780131003125

Interactive television (iTV)—an evolutionary merging of digital TV and the Internet—is set to take the world by storm! For consumers, iTV technology offers powerful new ways to interact with content providers and merchants. These include enjoying video on demand; participating in online shopping, banking, and gambling; and taking advantage of bonus multimedia features and controls added to news, sports, entertainment, and educational programming.

Organizations assembling the technologies and agents needed to deliver the content, though, find that providing iTV service is a monumental, multifaceted task. The sheer complexity also means that those proficient in one area of the service are often unfamiliar with the workings of other areas. iTV professionals seeking a better understanding of how it works and how it all fits together will find that iTV Handbook: Technologies and Standards, by topic authority Edward M. Schwalb, provides a welcome introduction to all the key issues, technology solutions, and standards surrounding the service.

This book covers:

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  Issues concerning the most links in the iTV "food chain"—content authors, producers, distributors, broadcasters, cable system operators, receiver manufacturers, and viewers

  
  


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  Details of the hardware, software, technologies, protocols, and standards that define iTV

  
  


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  Graphics, audio, video, and asset-management formats used in iTV, as well as security considerations, the broadcast file system, and more

  
  

iTV Handbook: Technologies and Standards provides a thorough overview of the iTV service and shows how everything fits together—it's the ideal introductory reference for technical managers, technical sales people, engineers, executives, content authors, and consumers interested in iTV technologies.

It's Not About the Technology : 9780387233505

This book attempts to answer the question: “What is that mindset, that particular kind of thinking, that is required of us to be successful in a high technology company and why?”

To be sure, the “high” in the high technology does not accord the company any special place in the market. But a unique ingredient distinguishes a high technology company: the culture of innovation that leads to new, often highly complex, technologies. The flip side of this unique culture is the excessive fixation of these companies on the technology superiority. The baggage of this excessive fixation has quite often led these companies to disconnect from the end customer, unwittingly so. Hence our question and this book.

A series of semiconductor startup experiences spurred me to write. The bizarre life in the high technology profession, always precariously disconnected from the world at large, provided the problematic. And a rush to connect back lead to this book.

If you are not careful, this profession can make you feel isolated from the rest of the world. What starts off as a genuinely rewarding career of learning new technologies, creating new designs, coming up with products that people liked and bought, can quickly turn into a schizophrenia of a respectable sort. How we purport ourselves at work, the extreme stress we undergo to achieve that teamwork spirit, the unending project deadlines that we are always scrambling to meet, seem to put us on a tangential path from the every day life of our families, our children and parents. When this happens, the disconnect is near-complete.

Truly great corporations have become so by attending to this single trait. Leadership at these companies, at every level up and down the hierarchy, are unusually sensitive to this disconnect. Genuinely spirited startups are this way. But these sensibilities do not come packaged in best practices, nor found in the quality assurance manuals. None of this is part of any engineering or business school curriculum, at least not in a way that is impressive. Perhaps the simplicity of this sensibility is not rigorous enough to be included in the academics.

On the contrary, these sensibilities are a direct manifestation of a particular kind of mindset of a few random individuals. Drawn from their own personal experience, these leaders often are not, at first, conscious of the culture they germinate. Nor do they consult manuals to cross-check if their thinking is correct.

It's Never Done That Before: A Guide to Troubleshooting Windows XP : 9781593270766

Most computer problems aren’t that violent or that dramatic, but the
immediate result is often the same: you sit there in a state of shock, staring at
the computer, saying to yourself, “What happened? What should I do now?
It’s never done that before!” This book will tell you how to understand and
fix most personal computer failures, whether they were caused by the
computer hardware, by the Windows operating system, or by some other
program running on the computer.

There’s not much you can do when your computer explodes except to
sweep up the remains and open a window to let the smoke out of the room.
But if Windows won’t start, or your hard drive breaks down, or you get a
cryptic Blue Screen error message, or any of a jillion other things go wrong,
you can almost always restore the machine to useful operation and recover
most of your data if you take an organized approach to troubleshooting.
The tools for understanding most computer problems are out there on the
Internet, in manuals and user guides, and through both on- and offline
communities of people who use similar equipment and programs. But they
won’t do you any good unless you know where to find them. That’s what this
book is for.

This is a book for people who use their computers all the time but who
don’t always know how to deal with the major and minor problems that
eventually seem to attack most computers. It will tell you how to apply
troubleshooting techniques and methods to evaluate and solve computer
problems, with an emphasis on computers running Windows XP. It won’t tell
you exactly what to do for every possible problem that might appear, but it will
tell you where to find detailed explanations of most problems and instructions
for fixing them. I will also show you how to recognize specific symptoms
and how to understand and use error messages, beep codes, and other
diagnostic tools that aren’t always clear on first inspection. I’ll also show you
where to find help from Microsoft, from other manufacturers and users, and
from the Combined Wisdom of the Internet. And finally, I will tell you how
to decide if the time and cost of a repair just isn’t worth the effort.

iText in Action: Creating and Manipulating PDF : 9781932394795

Imagine a publisher who wants to "stamp" his ebooks on the fly with the name of the buyer (to discourage sharing). Such a publisher would (and we know one who does) use iText for the task. Developers looking to enhance web- and other applications with dynamic PDF document generation and/or manipulation will find this book unique in content and readability. Based on ongoing examples that encourage learning "in action," they will finally understand PDF and learn how to build applications that produce professional, high-quality PDF documents. While the basic functionality of iText is easy to acquire, this book lowers the learning curve for more advanced functionality. It explains how to use iText to create/manipulate PDF documents on-the-fly in one or more of the following situations:

Due to time or size, the PDF documents can't be produced manually

The content of the document must be calculated or based on user input.

The content needs to be customized or personalized.

The PDF content needs to be served in a web environment.

Documents are to be created in "batch process" mode.

All the examples are written in Java, but they can be easily adapted to .NET by developers using one of the .NET ports: iTextSharp (C#) or iText.NET (#J). While iText is a free Java library and the examples are written from the point of view of the Java developer, nine out of ten examples can be run by .NET developers with only minimal changes.

Iterating Infusion: Clearer Views of Objects, Classes, and Systems : 9781590595374

Iterating Infusion: Clearer Views of Objects, Classes, and Systems is a one-of-a-kind book, not dependent on any single technology. Rather, it provides a way to integrate the most efficient techniques from a variety of programming methods, in a manner that makes designing and programming software look easy.

Iterating Infusion presents comprehensive tools for you to best manage and work with object orientation. These include simplified fundamental concepts, popular language comparisons, advanced designing strategies, a broad usage progression, thorough design notations (interaction algebra), and data-oriented (fundamentally-OO) languages.

The title, Iterating Infusion, alludes to the fact that any system has multiple, coexisting functional levels and that new levels--both lower and higher--are continually added to the same functional area. The practical effect is to bring processes into more focus, always clarifying the vague. The extreme form of this is when separate but compatible technologies are brought together to create advancements; these can be baby-steps or great leaps, with varying amounts of effort. In more general terms, the same thing in a different context can take on much more power. And actually, this phenomenon is at the heart of object-oriented software.

Readers have been confirming that, compared to books on just low-level details, Iterating Infusion presents cohesive insights that allow you to solve more problems with the same effort in more key places.

Iterated Function Systems for Real-Time Image Synthesis : 9781846286858

Natural phenomena can be visually described with fractal-geometry methods, where iterative procedures rather than equations are used to model objects. With the development of better modelling algorithms, the efficiency of rendering, the realism of computer-generated scenes and the interactivity of visual stimuli are reaching astonishing levels. Iterated Function Systems for Real-Time Image Synthesis gives an explanation of iterated function systems and how to use them in generation of complex objects. Contents include: Discussion of the most popular fractal models applied in the field of image synthesis. Presentation of iterated function system models, including recent developments in IFS representation. Exploration of algorithms for creating and manipulating fractal objects, and techniques for implementing the algorithms. Use of practical examples to demonstrate the implementation and application of IFS models.

The book contains both a description text and pseudo-code samples for the convenience of graphics application programmers.

About the Author

Slawomir S Nikiel is an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Zielona Gora in Poland. He received his MSC in computer and information science in 1991 and his Ph.D in computer vision in 1995 from the technical University of Wroclaw, Poland. In 1997-1998 he received a one year post-doc NATO fellowship in Hull, UK. His current research interests include fractals, rendering and animating complex structures for real-time computer graphics and virtual environments. His research area is related to Digital Cultural Heritage. Dr Nikiel is an author of over 30 papers in these fields.

Itanium Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles : 9780131013728

• Step-by-step guide to assembly language for the 64-bit Itanium processors, with extensive examples


• Details of Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC): Instruction set, addressing, register stack engine, predication, I/O, procedure calls, floating-point operations, and more


• Learn how to comprehend and optimize open source, Intel, and HP-UX compiler output

Understand the full power of 64-bit Itanium EPIC processors

Itanium® Architecture for Programmers is a comprehensive introduction to the breakthrough capabilities of the new 64-bit Itanium architecture. Using standard command-line tools and extensive examples, the authors illuminate the Itanium design within the broader context of contemporary computer architecture via a step-by-step investigation of Itanium assembly language. Coverage includes:

• The potential of Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC)


• Itanium instruction formats and addressing modes


• Innovations such as the register stack engine (RSE) and extensive predication


• Procedure calls and procedure-calling mechanisms


• Floating-point operations


• I/O techniques, from simple debugging to the use of files


• Optimization of output from open source, Intel, and HP-UX compilers

An essential resource for both computing professionals and students of architecture or assembly language, Itanium Architecture for Programmers includes extensive printed and Web-based references, plus many numeric, essay, and programming exercises for each chapter.

About the Author

JAMES S. EVANS is Professor of Computer Science and Chemistry and Director of Information Technology Planning at Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, where he teaches courses in computer architecture, hardware organization, and operating systems. He is also lead author of Alpha RISC Architecture for Programmers (Prentice Hall PTR). He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

GREGORY L. TRIMPER is Principal of viika, a consultancy specializing in portable technology and field computing, software design and implementation, and project management. He holds a B.A. from Lawrence University and pursues further studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

IT Services Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking and Marketing : 9780130191953

IT Services is the first 100% customer-focused guide to satisfying the consumers of your company’s IT services -- and building the loyalty your IT organization needs. In this book, three leading IT professionals present a fully integrated, comprehensive approach to service delivery in today’s global, distributed environments.

You’ll discover how to establish processes, service and cost models, performance measurements, and "stretch" goals that achieve clear business benefits-and then transform those goals into reality.

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  Proven results, benchmarks, and case studies -- not just theory!

  
  


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  Linking goal-setting, process development, and metrics to the goals of the enterprise -- step-by-step

  
  


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  Gaining buy-in from management, internal customers, and external suppliers

  
  


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  Building stable, predictable and cost-effective application support infrastructures

  
  


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  Structuring support services for maximum effectiveness

  
  

Applicable to both in-house and outsourced operations, IT Services offers a total roadmap for executives building enterprise-wide operations centers; practical help for managers seeking to deliver cost-effective support; and invaluable insight for IT "customers" who need to know what they can expect from their technology professionals.